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| From Sacramento CX Race 01 - Del Paso Park |
First of all I'm glad my race (Men's C) was at 9:30AM yesterday, as it was a scorcher by mid-morning. Decided not to bring the trainer and just warm up on course. The course was at Renfree Park just off I-80 & Watt Ave exit. Starting stretch was all hard packed dirt with enough room for 2 maybe 3 bikes wide. I was in the 2nd row on the starting line, should have been in 1st row. After the start it was a mad dash and a huge cloud of dust (think Northstar). Couldn't see a damn thing in front of me for about 1 minute until it got strung out a bit. There was one long straight dirt section, a decent left hand turn that you could pedal through, or drift a bit, depending on how fast you entered.. Then a long flat straight stretch of dirt heading back toward the grassy area of the park. There were a few sandy areas 1-2" deep that you could easily avoid or just plow right through. A sharpish left turn over a small wooden retaining block onto the grass. Then two sets of barriers to hop over, a bunch of tight switch backs in the grass. I went down quickly in one turn where a guy on a mountain bike couldn't quite make one of the sharp turns. I rolled up on his back wheel, buzzed his tire then tipped over. He had pretty much come to a complete stop. So I just hopped off and pushed my bike through the remaining turns and quickly remounted and headed back into the dirt section. The dirt was pretty much all about maintaining your speed and not letting any one pass you, big ring hammering! The then grassy sections was where guys were starting to hurt, and you could easily pass them as their momentum slowed. Tire pressure was key on Sunday. Started off high, then after a few practice laps lowered it down to about 55 front 60 rear. I ran the WTB Cross Wolf tires, which I was very happy with. They hooked up well, and rolled really fast on the hardpack. Everyone kept saying the Michelin Mud II's were the tire to run around Sacramento, but my buddy ended up with 2 flats on them, so dunno... I ended up 19th out of 50. Not too bad for very little training over the past month. Next race is October 11th. Oh and in some of the photos, it may look like I'm missing some teeth. No I haven't gone full redneck, it was just dirt crusted on to them...
Great race course! Thanks to Team BEER and SacramentoCX for putting it all together!
